Chamber music

Audiences

For well over a century after its inception about 1600, chamber music was supported primarily by the nobility. Aristocratic establishments customarily employed groups of musicians who served as composers, conductors, and performers of a variety of operatic, orchestral, and chamber music; and traditionally the audiences were restricted to the patrons and their guests. Chamber-music concerts were instituted in London in 1672, and seem to have been exceptional for their time, for regularly established professional chamber-music groups did not emerge until about 1810, apparently first in Vienna.

Meanwhile, primarily at certain German university towns in the 1700s, the establishment of ... (100 of 9,328 words)